2016-10-05 status

Done

Administrivia

• Massaged resume.
• Interviewed with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. It went okay, I think.

Data Collection

• Conducted two initial automatic data collection sessions with advanced pianist.
• Identified key wiring connection problems, which we are attributing to non-conductive adhesive in aluminum foil tape.
• Removed tape connections to 48 keys and cleaned key surfaces with Goo Gone.
• Applied new copper tape substrate to posterior section of aluminum tape on white keys.
• Rewired 48 keys with soldered connections to copper tape subsequently physically attached (taped) to copper substrate with conductive adhesive.
• Identified further problems that appear to be primarily post-processing (software) issues.

 Doing

1. Ordering fans and coffee for the lab from Amazon. Deliver to Department?
2. Assembling materials for Chancellor's Graduate Research Award.
3. Defining test cases for post-processing code (dactylizer.pl).
4. Drafting email to invite Survey II subjects to participate in on-campus sessions.
5. Creating abcD for complete Beringer corpus.
6. Defining procedure for sanity test of production automatic data collector (including Beringer data).
7. Defining procedure for initial data collection sessions (including Beringer data).
8. Implementing end-to-end machine learning experiment, using Beringer abcD data.

Struggling

• Need to work on my interviewing skills, which are quite rusty.

2016-09-28 status

Done

Administrivia

• IRB approved protocol amendment #4.
• Submitted $400 ISMIR 2016 registration for reimbursement from BDE's ICR fund.

Data Collection

• Confirmed automatic data collection Oct 1 at 10 a.m.
• Transcribed left hand notation for arpeggios and broken chords in Beringer (technical exercise) corpus.
• Produced abcD to capture right and left hand fingerings for arpeggios and broken chords in Beringer corpus.
• Produced abcD to capture right and left hand fingerings for major and minor scales in Beringer corpus.
• Mounted Dactylize circuit boards on back of piano and removed excess wiring. 
• Constructed more finger assemblies.
• Performed initial sanity test with beginning and intermediate pianists.
• Reproduced "slow start" problem in Dactylize system, where initial 50 or so notes in "monitor" sessions all have large numbers of missing or incorrect fingerings assigned. Then the system stabilizes and behaves perfectly. This needs to be debugged, but for the first session, we will just include a 50-note "preamble" for each session. 

 Doing

1. Assembling materials for Chancellor's Graduate Research Award.
2. Drafting email to invite Survey II subjects to participate in on-campus sessions.
3. Creating abcD for complete Beringer corpus.
4. Defining procedure for sanity test of production automatic data collector (including Beringer data).
5. Defining procedure for initial data collection sessions (including Beringer data).
6. Implementing end-to-end machine learning experiment, using Beringer abcD data.

Struggling

• Focus has been difficult this week, as I was laid off from my job on Monday after almost 17 years. The way forward is suddenly somewhat dim.

2016-09-12 status

Done

Administrivia

• Submitted protocol amendment #4 to IRB on Sep 7. No word yet.

Data Collection

• First automatic data collection scheduled for Oct 1.
• Transcribed left hand notation for Beringer (technical exercise) corpus.
• Transcribed harmonic minor scales for Beringer corpus.
• Implemented Dactylize circuit on breadboards for debugging.
• Constructed more finger assemblies.

 Doing

1. Assembling materials for Chancellor's Graduate Research Award.
2. Drafting email to invite Survey II subjects to participate in on-campus sessions.
3. Contemplating supporting multiple "tunes" in abcD. This would complicate abcDE.
4. Creating abcD for Beringer corpus.
5. Defining procedure for sanity test of production automatic data collector (including Beringer data).
6. Defining procedure for initial data collection sessions (including Beringer data).
7. Implementing end-to-end machine learning experiment, using Beringer abcD data.

Struggling

• Waiting for IRB approval to pull data from Survey III (WTC).

Dactylize build photos

I set up a Google Photo album to track progress on the build. Enjoy as order is made out of chaos.

Dactylize parts list

Here are the items (and approximate costs) needed to reproduce the system I built, assuming you are working in a well-found electronics lab. These parts should be sufficient to produce the piano component and 6 hand assemblies (enough for three people):

• A digital piano. (I used an aging Casio Privia PX-130, which I would value at about $300. The latest of this line of instruments, the PX-160, goes for about $500 new.)
• Arduino Micro Pro equivalent. (Clones like those from Osoyoo can be had for about $9.) Any Arduino should do the job.
• Two 74HC165 8-bit input shift register integrated circuit chips. Cost: $5.
• Eleven 74HC595 8-bit output shift register integrated circuit chips like these. Cost: $10.
• Eighteen carbon film 10k Ohm 1/4 watt resistors. Cost: $2.
• 2 monolithic 0.1 uF 100 Volt capacitors. Cost: $1.
• Through-hole protoboard for input shift register (finger) circuit. I used one of these. Cost: $5.
• Large solderable breadboard like this for the output shift register (key) circuit. Cost: $12.
• Four 40-position male header pins to be cut to various lengths (including eleven 8-pins for key inputs and four 4-pins for finger inputs, plus miscellaneous others). Cost $2.
• Roll of 2-inch aluminum duct-work tape. Cost: $5.
• Roll of 1-inch copper foil tape for black keys (optional). Cost: $15.
• 88 12-inch male-female stranded jumper wires with 0.1 inch pre-crimped terminals. Sold in bags of 50. Cost: $36.
• 32 36-inch female-female stranded jumper wires with 0.1 inch pre-crimped terminals. Sold in bags of 20. Cost: $36.
• 86 (56 for keys + 30 for hand assemblies) 6-inch male-female stranded jumper wires with 0.1 inch pre-crimped terminals. Sold in bags of 50. Cost: $20.
• 45 (11 + 4+4 + 7+7 + 12) 1x8-pin crimp connector housings. Add 2 such housings for each hand assembly you wish to, well, assemble. Get 5 bags of 10 to be safe. Cost: $5.
• 12 1x4-pin crimp connector housings. Cost: $2.
• 12 1x1-pin crimp connector housings. Cost: $1.
• 25 feet of TechFlex Flexo braided cable sleeve (optional). Cost: $10.
• Two 10-foot 16-conductor ribbon cables (or about 16 feet of the stuff). Cost: $10.
• 10-foot 10-connector ribbon cable. Cost: $5.
• 14 16-position right-angle female cable-mounted IDC connectors. Cost: $6.
• Six-inch cable zip ties, pack of 100. Cost: $2.
• Adhesive cable tie bases, pack of 100. Cost: $10.
• 40 latex finger cots. Cost $3.
• Three ounces DAP Wedgwood contact cement. Cost: $9.
• Graphite lubricant. Cost: $6.
• 6-foot USB-to-micro-USB cable. Cost: $8.
• 6-foot USB 2.0 A-male-to-B-male cable (or equivalent MIDI cabling for your digital piano). Cost: $5.

The total cost for materials is $271 plus the cost of the piano, which you should be able to restore to its original playing condition when finished with your Dactylize system.

If you are starting completely from scratch, as I was, you will need the following essentials.

• Multi-colored solid hook-up wire. Cost: $18.
• Soldering iron. I strongly recommend the Hakko FX-888D soldering station. My experiences as a novice with cheap irons were extremely unpleasant. Cost: $100.
• Solder. $10.
• Solder wick. $7.
• Solder sucker. $5.
• Wire strippers. $11.
• Needle-nose pliers.
• Small wire cutters.
• Auto-ranging digital multi-meter that beeps for connectivity testing. The Innova 3320 seems to be the cheapest option that ticks all of the boxes. $26.
• Safety glasses.
• Flat wooden board to work on.
• Electrical tape.
• Ice packs for burns.

Also recommended:

• Helping hands with magnifying glass. Cost: $7.
• Circuit board holder. $13.

Hooah, Dactylize

Output shift register

Moving directly to the patch-bay matrix circuit turned out to be overreaching. So I stepped back and tested the components separately. First, we made sure the output shift registers were doing the right thing. After some gnashing of teeth, I realized I was loading the wrong sketch. With the right sketch, it worked like a champ. All 16 LEDs lit up in order.

Output shift register circuit with full array of test LEDs.
See pp. 436-441 in Drymonitis.

Input shift register

The real problems were in the input shift register. A resistor had a bad connection. With that fixed, its test circuit worked.

Input shift register circuit with push buttons for testing through Pure Data.
See pp. 430-436 in Drymonitis.

Patch-bay matrix

Putting  these bits together, we get a working 16-input, 16-output patch-bay matrix. This sometimes gets a little noisy, with false connections detected and then usually corrected. But restarting the patch seemed to quiet it down.

Working Broken patch-bay matrix circuit.

The plan now, for the first implementation at least, is to have two input shift register ICs (for the hands) and 11 output shift register ICs (for the keys). The Fritzing diagram shared earlier has this the other way around. The output circuit is simpler and requires no resistors or capacitors. This will shorten the part list. I am not sure which way is more performant. I think removing the capacitors will help performance, but it probably won't matter much.

Finger-key interface (using mini keyboard)

Ignoring scalability, the last bit in the hardware proof of concept is to prototype (however crudely) the patch cord to be formed by connecting a wire emanating from a conductive surface on a given key to one attached to an individual finger.

Solder 16x16 patch-bay matrix circuit

[WE ARE (still) HERE ]

I am a bit concerned about noise in the circuit. Solid connections should mitigate some of the noise, I hope. Also, the dimensions of the separate power supply will not fit on the narrower breadboard-like solderable circuit boards I have purchased. We could leave it on a breadboard, I suppose. I was also surprised to see its LED light up dimly when it was connected to the patch-bay matrix. I took it out in the picture above because I was afraid this phenomenon was contributing to the noise in the circuit. We will need to reintroduce this in the soldered circuit, as I don't think the Arduino can power the complete circuit. But I think this power supply (with the 2 amp 7 volt DC adapter I am using) can power the whole shebang.

UPDATE 2016-06-01
We have soldered two boards to implement a 16x48 patch bay:

The power supply won't fit on the protoboards, so we keep it on a breadboard:

The more complicated input shift registers are used for the fingers:

Output shift registers handle the key connections:

And the last piece is the Arduino UNO:

Unfortunately, the "noise" we noted earlier and hoped would be mitigated with a more solid circuit seems instead to be amplified. Or something isn't soldered correctly. If the state of the connections does not change, the output should not change. But we are seeing a lot of output.

I have moved back to the breadboard and will step through the software "sketch" to see what I can see.

UPDATE 7 June 2016
We have a working patch-bay matrix for one input chip and three output. There is apparently something wrong with the daisy chaining of the input shift register component. The plan is now to implement something end to end for one hand.

Debug the sketch

UPDATE 7 June 2016

We have a working sketch for one hand that produces human readable serial output that seems to reflect fingerings accurately.

MIDI processing and event time-stamping

The idea is to monitor the following:

• Fingering connection change events
• MIDI note-on and -off events
• MIDI program change events

We will do this through Pure Data. Each event shall be timestamped at microsecond granularity. (We will then process this output offline with a Perl script to align the fingering events with the MIDI events and produce some flavor of abcDF. This programming bit will probably be done after most of the hardware and other software is assembled and working. Initially, we just need to convince ourselves that we have all of the data we need to get this to work.)

UPDATE 7 June 2016
I punted on Pure Data. I have a multi-threaded Python script that monitors the Arduino serial output and the MIDI input and applies a microsecond timestamp uniformly to both. This should be enough for us to post-process the data to determine fingerings. The exact logic of how that should be done is left as an exercise for the writer.

Foil's war

Now we move to the full size keyboard. The plan for applying foil to the keys was to use copper foil tape for the white keys and aluminum foil tape for the black keys.

To make the connection from the foil to a (stranded) copper wire, I planned to solder the wire to a small piece of tape and then stick this tape on the key foil. This seems like a potential problem area as we are relying on the adhesive to make this connection with a moving part. Soldering directly a wire directly on the foil either before or after might be a better approach.

It might also be more effective to use thicker metal foil and apply contact cement ourselves. This might help us position precut (and pre-soldered?) foil pieces, as the cement will take some time to dry.

Another idea is to crack open the keyboard enclosure and move the connection (and maybe our entire circuit) inside the enclosure. This would be elegant, but we don't know how this will fit. And, while this does seem to protect us from accidental bumps and things getting unstuck, fixing any problem that does occur will be a time-consuming affair. Just a thought.

Do we need to use vegetable oil to solder the wire to the foil?

We start foiling 16 keys for the initial 16x16 circuit.

UPDATE 7 June 2016
We have foiled about 3/4 of the keys. Here are some pictures

A feast of wire (crimping my style)

We create ribbon cables and connectors that allow us us to reduce strain on the key wire connections and foil adhesive and easily to detach the keys and the finger assemblies from the circuit. Start with end to end solution for the 16x16 (10x16) circuit.

All connections to key foil and finger cots should be with stranded wire. The other ends of finger wires will feed 4-wire crimp connectors. In the likely event that our circuit will be housed outside the keyboard's own enclosure, the other ends for key wires will feed 8-wire crimp connectors, which will be firmly attached to the outside of the keyboard enclosure to reduce potential strain on the foil connections.

The original plan was to use banana plugs for individual finger connections to the circuit board. This will be abandoned in favor of crimp connectors interfacing with IDC connections and ribbon cables.

UPDATE 7 June 2016
We are booting on the ribbon cables for the key connections. We plan to mount the boards on the back of the music stand and connect directly to it using Pololu jumper connector housings. We don't need long run ribbons. Here is a picture of what we plan to do for the key harnesses:

Proper finger harness

Latex cots need to have conductive material (either foil or graphite-infused contact cement) applied and attached to (flexible multi-stranded) wires. The wires need to be collected at the wrist with medical tape . Also at the wrist, crimp connectors should allow for easy attachment to (and detachment from) ribbon cables. These ribbon cables will be connected to the male header pins on the  input shift register component.

This is probably going to take some iteration/experimentation to get right.

UPDATE 7 June 2016
Here are two options for the end to-end finger connections, one which requires soldering and one which does not.

Soldered finger connection assembly.

Solderless finger connection assembly.

Add one output shift register IC at a time and test

Yeah, what he said.

2016-04-20 status

Done

Administrivia

• Submitted protocol amendment to IRB on April 14. No word yet.

Data Collection

• Discovered several people are unable to see rendered scores in the Qualtrics survey.
• Developed alternative submission front end, dubbed "Surveyor."
• Worked with dxSurvey developer to define a back end in his Microsoft Azure service. It fear this runs afoul of University policy on using a survey vendors with whom we do not have a formal business associate agreement. (See Section I, Subsection H.) This is unfortunate because this is the easiest path to an end-to-end solution.
• Defined my own alternative database back end in the AWS cloud. As I read it, the policy should allow this.

 Doing

1. Trying to build a web service interface between the front and back ends of Surveyor.
2. Drafting email to send to subjects as reminder and to describe the new path forward.

Struggling

• Worried about the IRB. 

2016-04-06 status

Done

Administrivia

• Completed year-end summary.

Data Collection

• Responding to feedback from AFL, fixed problem in re-opening survey session after closing browser. This was a simple Qualtrics configuration problem.
• Implemented and sanity tested breadboard prototype of Dactylize circuit.
• Worked through some tutorials on Pure Data for much-needed refresher course.
• Filled in some details for the back end of the automatic data collection. (The plan is to output text-based MIDI events along with timestamps with microsecond granularity to a file interleaved with fingering change events timestamped the same way. Then we will process the file offline and generate output similar to what we are producing in the manual editor along with an actual MIDI file. This processing will be done by a Perl or Python program, to help me retain some sanity.)

 Doing

1. Deploying Survey III to remainder (bulk) of subject pool.
2. Proving Dactylize concept. (Scale up to 80 keys?)
3. Soldering production Dactylize circuit.
4. Creating (crimping) custom cables for production Dactylize system.
5. Discussing each descriptive chart in detail--its purpose, insight (if any). High priority now because promised to share with subjects.
6. Transcribing Harold Samuel fingerings from Tovey WTC edition through Survey III.
7. Determining predictive value of one fingering sequence choice on another--initial Chi Square foray.
8. Calculating mean edit distance as measure of IAA and "influence."
9. Calculating adoption rate as measure of "influence."
10. Performing Chi Square analysis of exploratory dataset to correlate abbreviated Parncutt fingerings with gender, reach, age, Hanon usage, technical practice, preparation actions, injury, etc.
11. Finishing Parncutt algorithm implementation.
12. Transcribing Czerny Opus 821 to use in missing annotation study. 10% done.

Struggling

• A funeral in Southern Illinois will take a chunk out of my weekend.

2016-03-30 status

Done

Data Collection

• Responding to feedback from AFL, changed color highlighting behavior and typographic convention (using hyphens instead of commas) for what we now call "finger substitution" (the term used by pianists for using different fingers to strike and release a key).
• Fixed latency problem with arrow buttons and associated improper scrolling under iOS.
• Gave up on invitation-only Survey III, as this feature caused problems that stumped Qualtrics support.
• Added name and email question to survey, so I can manually map the data back to player profiles. This is really annoying, but we need to move forward.
• Finalized Survey III (again) and asked IB, AFL, and Dan Murphy to review.
• Solidified design of Automatic Data Collector, known hereafter as "Dactylize."
• Discussed plans with David Meyer, EE/ME and all-around mensch. He suggested separate power supply to ensure adequate current for ICs.
• Ordered another $200 of components to prototype and to build the system.
• Decided to use my Casio Privia PX-130 for production system. This should leave us with $250 to compensate subjects for on-campus sessions. Tic toc.

 Doing

1. Proving Dactylize concept.
2. Discussing each descriptive chart in detail--its purpose, insight (if any). High priority now because promised to share with subjects.
3. Transcribing Harold Samuel fingerings from Tovey WTC edition through Survey III.
4. Determining predictive value of one fingering sequence choice on another--initial Chi Square foray.
5. Calculating mean edit distance as measure of IAA and "influence."
6. Calculating adoption rate as measure of "influence."
7. Performing Chi Square analysis of exploratory dataset to correlate abbreviated Parncutt fingerings with gender, reach, age, Hanon usage, technical practice, preparation actions, injury, etc.
8. Finishing Parncutt algorithm implementation.
9. Transcribing Czerny Opus 821 to use in missing annotation study. 10% done.

Struggling

• Illness, vacation, and the end of Lenovo's fiscal year have all been distractions.

Dactylize proof of concept

Initial breadboard layout supporting 16 keys and 10 fingers. 

Foil tape key overlays on four keys on mini keyboard, wired with
alligator clips for proof of concept.

Dactylize drawings

Finger and key connectors

Enclosure concept

Connector details

Architecture and thoughts on output

Circuit details

Dactylize comes alive

We have finally come up with a design for automatically collecting fingering data from actual performances that I think has a good chance of working (details to follow).

There are two catches. First, we will be attaching very light wired "sensors" (actually just connection points) to the pianist's unsuspecting finger tips. Minimizing the effects of these sensors on performance is a design challenge that we will need to address.

Second, and more important for this email, we will be making some modifications to the keyboard itself. These modifications should not damage the keyboard, but they are not things I would want to see done to a digital piano I cared about.

Therefore, I am considering two options. First, I have a very old and cheap 61-key keyboard (a Roland EP5) that I would happily donate to the cause. It is velocity sensitive, but does not have a weighted action. It is very nearly beneath *my* contempt. Indeed, I may use it for prototyping just for spite.

Option two is to purchase a $500 Casio Privia PX-160. This keyboard has a remarkably good graded hammer action that seems to be the best at this price point. In my almost utterly worthless opinion, it is reasonably comparable to the actions in the piano lab at UIC, but of course opinions will vary on this point. Anyway, it is the best keyboard I can afford with the grant money I have left.

My question to you: Is it worth it to have a graded hammer action? Part of the data we want to collect is a reasonably nuanced MIDI performance. I think it will help in this regard, and it should be more enjoyable for subjects to play. But I could also spend this money to compensate subjects. They would enjoy that too.

2016-03-09 status

Done

Data Collection

• Fixed problem with Survey III in Safari. I reinitialized the editor to be empty when NEXT is clicked, and everything seems to work normally. This should help our response rate a lot.
• Validated data entered in abcDE.
• Entered Czerny's recommended fingerings for Prelude 9 and 17 and Fugue 17. Fugue 9 posed too many problems for me to finger from Czerny. Decided to leave it in survey to see if people working from other editions fare better.
• Drafted recruitment email for Survey III.
• Finalized Survey III and asked IB and AFL to review.
• Transcribed 7 of 60 studies from Czery's Opus 821. 
• Fixed several abcDE bugs and warts.
• Dropped computer vision plans for automatic data collector (ADC) in favor of more straightforward electronic approach inspired by suggestion from Alex Demos. Dr. Demos suggested that using the MIDI data and closing a circuit tied to a particular finger should be enough: attach wires to the fingers and foil to the keys and just use finger-to-key contacts as switches. But I think the problem is a little more complicated than that, as having multiple fingers resting on the keys when a note is struck and the timing granularity of MIDI would likely leave us with considerable ambiguity. I think this needs to be handled as a patch-bay circuit, where a specific finger is tied to a specific key at the point of contact just as two parties were connected on an old switchboard.
• Found incredibly informative book explaining a patch-bay circuit using the Arduino and Pure Data (Pd), a graphical programming language I have actually used before. So I have a pretty clear plan in mind for prototyping ADC. It should take more soldering than thinking.
• Ordered about $300 of components and tools needed to build the system.
• Reached out to a EE friend to sanity check my plans. Waiting to hear back. Will reach out to Dr. Zefran if push comes to shove.
• Met with Dr. Demos and discussed my research plans and musical phrasing at some length. He thought WTC was a good corpus choice, and the missing annotation (fill-in-the-blank) problem seemed to resonate with him (as it did with CR). We concluded that we did not need to address phrasing in the WTC data collection, as we can make assumptions about phrasing because of the style of the music. Anyway, we will be leaving this for future work. By the way, he teaches advanced statistics in the Psychology Department. Hail fellow, well met.

Data Analysis

• Analyzed a number of descriptive charts and clarified some methodological matters.

 Doing

1. Discussing each descriptive chart in detail--its purpose, insight (if any). Top priority now because I want to share with subjects, as promised.
2. Transcribing Czerny Opus 821 to use in missing annotation study. 10% done.
3. Determining predictive value of one fingering sequence choice on another--initial Chi Square foray.
4. Calculating mean edit distance as measure of IAA and "influence."
5. Calculating adoption rate as measure of "influence."
6. Performing Chi Square analysis of exploratory dataset to correlate abbreviated Parncutt fingerings with gender, reach, age, Hanon usage, technical practice, preparation actions, injury, etc.
7. Finishing Parncutt algorithm implementation.

Struggling

• What, me worry?

2016-02-24 status

Done

Administrivia

• Completed required "Preventing Discrimination and Sexual Violence Training."
• Determined current plans are consistent with IRB protocol and terms of Provost's Award, which stipulate "funds must be expended substantially in accord with the budget submitted." (So we have some wiggle room.)

Data Collection

• Drafted "monolithic" Qualtrics survey to collect WTC fingering data for 9 P&Fs and to spend $1000 (or less?) in the process.
• Added undo/redo and revert functionality to abcDE.
• Added "tags" button to open modal dialog for metadata entry in abcDE.
• Added support for "copy" and "paste" of complete fingering sequences.
• Downloaded four public domain editions of WTC Book 1 with different editors (Czerny, Busoni, Czerny and Roitzch, and Mugellini) from IMSLP.
• Split preludes from fugues to be more digestible by subjects.
• Entered Czerny's recommended fingerings for seven WTC P&Fs (1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 15 and 21) into abcDE, identifying several bugs and warts in the process. The interface does make this a relatively painless process, so I can generate a fair amount of data myself.
• Fixed several bugs and warts. Several remain.
• Decided to implement a MIDI/image capture system independent from future computer vision system. Will prototype in Python and SimpleCV.
• Reached out to a friend and former film major for advice on lighting and cameras, with the idea of assembling a shopping list.

Data Analysis

• Soon, soon. Started typing R code today.

 Doing

1. Determining predictive value of one fingering sequence choice on another--initial Chi Square foray.
2. Drafting recruitment email for Survey III.
3. Calculating mean edit distance as measure of IAA and "influence."
4. Calculating adoption rate as measure of "influence."
5. Testing monolithic Qualtrics survey.
6. Discussing each descriptive chart in detail--its purpose, insight (if any).
7. Performing Chi Square analysis of exploratory dataset to correlate abbreviated Parncutt fingerings with gender, reach, age, Hanon usage, technical practice, preparation actions, injury, etc.
8. Entering Czerny annotations for P&F 9 and 17. The plan is to annotate--and in the process validate--the 10 (minus 1, since the content of Czerny's P&F 8 diverges significantly from OpenWTC) most well-known selections as reported by our survey respondents.

Struggling

• The editor is not working for multiple exercises in Qualtrics using Safari desktop. Fingerings from prior exercises appear in subsequent ones, and prior scores appear "under" current ones. Very strange and very bad for our response rate.
• We have complete Czerny and Hart fingerings, but only partial data for Parncutt. I think we need functioning Parncutt code before we can move forward with last week's proposed study to apply our evaluation method.
• How do we combine mean agreement, mean edit distance, and adoption as a measure of overall "influence" or quality of a model?
• Musing about ambiguity (completeness) in editorial fingering annotations. What questions can we ask our subjects to clarify? What exercises can we pose?

2016-02-10 status

Done

Administrivia

• Pinged Sherice about reimbursement matters.
• Obtained LaTeX template from Rachel and Nick to use for prelim report.
• Filled in some blanks and checked it all into GitHub.

BowTIE

• Created new "pure" Cordova app. 
• Got notation to display.
• Created button graphics and icons.
• Took stab at multitouch implementation.
• Opened issues in GitHub to define next steps for team.

Data Collection

• Outlined follow-up survey for extrinsic "influence" evaluation of Parncutt fragments.

Data Analysis

• Created descriptive statistics report with complete data (191 subjects).

 Doing

1. Calculating mean edit distance as measure of IAA and "influence."
2. Calculating adoption rate as measure of "influence."
3. Discussing each descriptive chart in detail--its purpose, insight (if any).
4. Determine predictive value of one fingering sequence choice on another.
5. Performing Chi Square analysis of exploratory dataset to correlate abbreviated Parncutt fingerings with gender, reach, age, Hanon usage, technical practice, preparation actions, injury, etc.

Struggling

• Must spend money.
• How do we combine mean agreement, mean edit distance, and adoption as a measure of overall "influence" or quality of a model?
• Musing about ambiguity (completeness) in editorial fingering annotations. What questions can we ask our subjects to clarify? What exercises can we pose?

2016-02-03 status

Done

Data Collection

• Moved abcDE editor to new release home on github.io.
• Proved concept (mostly) of integrating new editor into Qualtrics survey.
• Declared abcDE feature complete.
• Wrote end-user and administrator documentation.

Data Analysis

• Created new GitHub repo.
• Played around with Bibtex.
• Drafted some nullable hypotheses.
• Spun wheels.

 Doing

1. Discussing each descriptive chart in detail--its purpose, insight (if any).
2. Determine predictive value of one fingering sequence choice on another.
3. Performing Chi Square analysis of exploratory dataset to correlate abbreviated Parncutt fingerings with gender, reach, age, Hanon usage, technical practice, preparation actions, injury, etc.

Struggling

• New (?) Qualtrics and new abcDE editor are not getting along. 

Czerny uber alles

I think we should develop a corpus of Czerny's published fingerings and use it as an initial source of ground truth. To assist in this effort we will first flesh out the ideas of editorial conventions and full specifications and use these principals to create an MDC5 (abcDE) with partial input and auto-complete features. Then we see how hard it is to annotate WTC.

Then Op. 821 and The Little Pianist.

Null hypotheses

1. There is no correlation between gender and fingering preferences.
2. There is no correlation between hand size and fingering preferences.
3. There is no correlation between scale fingering preferences and fingering preferences of non-scale musical fragments.
4. There is no correlation between fingerings of one Parncutt fragment and another.
5. Editorial fingering suggestions have no effect on fingering preferences.
6. There is no correlation between fingering preferences and Hanon practice.
7. There is no correlation between fingering preferences and technical study practice.
8. There is no correlation between the age of the pianist and fingering preferences.
9. There is no correlation between average pivot count in subject fingerings and fingering "difficulty" (variability).
10. There is no correlation between pitch span within a fragment and fingering "difficulty" (variability).

2016-01-20 status

Done

Data Collection

• Created new feature-rich manual data collection tool (formerly MDC5 but now rechristened abcDE) to allow input of partial fingering information.
• Created detailed help page for same.
• Defined file format, abcD, and implemented its recognition by the new editor.
• Defined abcDF grammar for fingering sequences.
• Created parser for abcDF.
• Defined public interface to abcDE JavaScript library.
• Deployed abcDE to nlp.cs.uic.edu.
• Completed initial descriptive statistics for survey data.
• Wrote script to identify note-wise fingering "consensus" in Survey I data.

 Doing

1. Drafting paper for ISMIR 2016 to describe abcDE.
2. Performing Chi Square analysis of exploratory dataset to correlate abbreviated Parncutt fingerings with gender, reach, age, Hanon usage, technical practice, preparation actions, injury, etc.
3. Looking at how well selecting fingering a in Exercise A predicts selecting fingering b in Exercise B. That is, do people have common patterns of fingering preference?
4. Evaluating Tableau for easier (and richer) data visualization. (SQLite support missing for OS X.)

Struggling

• What? Me worry?